


under wicked water lights i've been wishing my whole life

by dabblingDilettante



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Spoilers, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23663365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dabblingDilettante/pseuds/dabblingDilettante
Summary: The mako pools change you.  That's reason enough to go.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart & Cloud Strife
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	under wicked water lights i've been wishing my whole life

**Author's Note:**

> 1) sick with the Virus and watching someone play ff7r making me really fucking emo about cloud as usual, as has been my life, for fucking, 20 years or some shit, great  
> 2) Trans Headcanons. tifa and cloud. i like trans stuff because i am a big trans. leave me be.  
> 3) i have a bad memory ala cloud. i dont remember a lot of stuff about extended lore well, let alone everything that happens in FF7. i am sorry. this is very indulgent and very quick.  
> 4) originally meant to be a quick drabble, but you can see that this is no longer a drabble. whoops.

When you become a SOLDIER, they drape your body in mako. Your body is remade in the essence of the planet. Unmade and put back together, stronger. Better. More than you were before. In photographs, the eyes of SOLDIER members shine with a brilliant green around their irises, and there is a part of Cloud that is desperately jealous.

He would not say this, however. In the same way he was jealous of Tifa for the manner in which people loved her, for her strength in the face of fighting for the person she was, for the way she had two parents. Until she didn’t. Then, that was his fault.

It only made the mako pools more inviting.

If his rough skin could be shaved away till only muscle remained beneath, for the skin to regrow healthy and new and soft. Soft in the manner of babies and soft in the manner Tifa’s could tend toward when she took her medicine, though her skin was still calloused and rough because she saw no fear in the face of being strong. If his eyes, too similar to his own mother’s in a way he could never truly emulate, could take on a new tinge that was his own. If he could be strong without the constant work, the muscle, the upkeep, the trouble, the stress, the sleepless nights.

If Cloud could just get in, he could change his life forever. That would be enough. 

It had to be enough. There was no other way.

\--

He does not get the mako pools. 

Of course.

He couldn’t ask for medicine like Tifa, either. Instead, he is a foot soldier. A servant who nonetheless receives a helmet that works as enough of a mask to let him forget himself and hide his shame. The shame in question is difficult to pinpoint. It could be the failures of his promises. He told Tifa so many things. He had yet to deliver on any of them.

And yet –

And yet.

There were other feelings that gnawed at his gut the same way the scent of the reactors did. Pretending to be a man was no better than pretending to be a boy.

\--

When he sees Tifa again, Cloud does not show his face. In some way, being a ghost who happened to be one thing was better than being Cloud and being called out for what he appeared to be. The foot soldiers melded into the background, but Zack never let Cloud be. Maybe that was good. In Zack’s eyes, they were fellows not for things like the strength in their arms or the deep hollowness of their voices. They were allies because they were poor kids with nowhere else to go. 

Cloud could appreciate that. It brought him home to Tifa, almost, as a phrase. Backwater hicks at least knew how to survive. Knew what to do to make it through the wall. The way Zack made it sound, it was almost like it was good that they’d all come from nowhere. No expectations.

It wasn’t true, but. There were a lot of things about Zack that Cloud wished he could emulate. 

It was nice to pretend.

\--

The way that it goes is –

People died. Cloud was there. Tifa did not die. Sephiroth did die. Time was not a question. Cloud was a SOLDIER. Cloud is a SOLDIER. He had the mako in his eyes to prove it. That was what he’d wanted. That was everything. The sword is light in his hands now, finally, because it had always been. He had been a SOLDIER for years, now, as he came to Midgar. That was not a question. 

That was reality.

Reality meant Cloud was a proper man. Cloud is a proper man. He tells himself that, without having to tell himself that, because he convinced himself long ago that was the case. It was the mako he had wanted, after all. It was the strength to do something better that he had wanted, after all. He could hate Hojo, but he wasn’t sure why. He could hate Shinra as a company, even if he couldn’t place all the millions of reasons to have distaste for it. 

Tifa’s face is the first thing he sees in Midgar.

But of all the things she could say. How proud she is, how happy she is, how impressed she is that now he’s really grown up. He’s become a real man.

Tifa says, “Are you okay?”

“Been a while, Tifa,” he answers. When Tifa speaks, he cannot hear her voice. Cloud is aware of everything she could say. He nods, self-assured, and goes on, “Ex-SOLDIER now.” There is an expression on Tifa’s face that he should not read, so he does not. “I came here for work. I’m a mercenary.”

It’s a shorter walk to the Sector 7 slums than he expects. To some degree, Tifa is dragging him along, holding his hand tight enough that her fingers turn white. 

He explains, “I don’t have time to play reunions right now. I just got into town.”

“I know,” Tifa says, and it is harsh, and sharp, and scared. And she says, “I know. But I actually might have some work for you. We’ve got some open rooms in Sector 7.”

Cloud asks, “What kind of work?”

\--

Sometimes, Cloud can’t quite place Tifa in time or space when he sees her. In Seventh Heaven and in their shared apartment and in the fields fighting monsters. There is no moment but that, and it is then he cannot think that he has ever met her before. But something about the way that Tifa acts and her familiarity and her baffling concern tells him that she exists outside those moments as the same person she is everywhere. Tifa is Tifa no matter the place and no matter the time.

Mako makes a person strange. Displaces the mind. Nothing matters so much anymore once time is immaterial and unimportant. Once you know you’re on a timer, ticking down like an aggressive alarm clock warning you to never sleep. But that is one of the good aspects of it. One of the few. Cloud knows, somehow, under every layer of confusion and misplaced memory and minor detail he doesn’t care to remember.

He wouldn’t have had a long life either way. Mako or no.

\--

The dress isn’t what matters, really. Dancing like an idiot for Aerith’s approval either, though it baffles him just as much that he’d act like such a fool. It’s that he doesn’t feel anything. No joy or dismay or disgust or. He just doesn’t care, and there is a part of Cloud that does not understand why he can’t summon a single emotion beyond the reality that this is for a job.

What did make him react was the Don. Maybe that was the part that was most embarrassing. The moment he saw a person mistreating the women in his life, mistreating him for daring to wear different attire and make-up, much as a mask as it was – he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. But that was the good thing about being a SOLDIER. That was the good thing about being the Cloud that was now, and not a minute ago or a minute in the future. There was not a consequence. He was free to say it, because ultimately, Cloud was safe. 

The Cloud in two minutes, he might not be so safe. But that wasn’t him. Not now.

So Cloud speaks his mind. He says exactly what he thinks to the Don, and he revels in it, almost. He stands tall and raises his head high, and in that moment, Cloud is above anything that could be given to him. Seen as a woman, seen as a man, seen as neither, seen as both. In this body, he had the strength to deny and fight back against anyone who would stop him from doing what he felt was right, and no one would stop Tifa, or Aerith, or anyone he knew.

It is a straight-forward thing to be Cloud in front of Tifa and Aerith. To be Cloud for their sake. To be Cloud for the sake of spiting a man that was little more than a rich rapist. To be Cloud for the sake of standing for something for the first time, except –

He didn’t think about this.

Cloud is a mercenary. 

He checks the list without having to look at it, as the trio dispatches another monster.

\--

Zack was basically the perfect guy. It was embarrassing how stupidly perfect he was. Deep down, Cloud hated him for it. Just like he hated Tifa. Hated everyone who had something they cared about enough to lay down their lives for it. So he had to be a mercenary. Had to be a man who could look for his own survival and nothing else. Or else he’d end up just like Aerith. Dying for nothing.

The mako poisons the mind. Poisons one against the world. An alarm keeps ringing in Cloud’s head, but he doesn’t wake up. 

\--

He didn’t hate anyone. 

That was a lie.

Fuck Hojo. And Sephiroth, but even then, there was this sick stupid sense of pity he still felt because they were all just. Puppets. That was the worst part.

He couldn’t be Zack. Couldn’t be Tifa either. And the person he was – that wasn’t anything in-between either. Cloud, as a person, as an entity, as a concept. That was out a window. After all the dreams and the failures. The mako and the abuse. What he could have been was lost somewhere in the flow.

“Tifa,” he says, one day, in the fugue of what was a coma and what he wished was sleep. “Am I still here?”

Her hand is on his head.

He doesn’t hate her either.

Just jealous.

Always jealous.

“Sorry I couldn’t be what you needed,” he says.

“You don’t have to be,” she murmured. “I can’t be what you need, either.”

For a time, he is quiet. Though he cannot quite open his eyes, there are lights that spark behind his eyelids, and he can make out the shape of Tifa from the sound of her voice. Finally, Cloud says, “Maybe you’re doing better than what I need. …maybe it’s about you doing this for you, too.”

That makes her laugh. Harsh, almost, but Tifa hides it behind a hand. “You see through me so well.”

“It’s good,” Cloud says. “Wish I could do that. I always wished I could. Do what you can do. Be what you can be.” In his silence, he can sense Tifa rolling through responses, as if he needed one. He goes on. “I finally realized I can’t be.”

“Cloud,” she says, but he finds her hand and squeezes it.

“You saw how bad I was at being me,” he rasps, in some forced joviality. “Kind of fucked up everything with it. I’d say I’d do a worse job if I had tried to be you, though. …it puts things in perspective.”

“You didn’t ruin anything anymore than the rest of us,” Tifa mutters. “I would give plenty if I didn’t have to be myself.”

“No. There’s a line. It’s not about our mistakes. At least our mistakes are a reflection of who we are. The perspective is more that it makes me realize what I was doing wrong. I tried to emulate you, or make you proud. I did the same with Zack. It didn’t work for me, but I couldn’t admit that.” His body was just. A body, devoid of any real meaning or significance to the person he could be. “When you transitioned when we were kids. I don’t know how long I’ve been stuck on all of this.”

“Cloud, are you…?” She doesn’t finish the obvious question.

“Not the same way,” he mutters. “There’s something to it. I can’t even touch the idea of what I want to do. Or who I want to be. I can’t imagine us surviving the next month. It all feels so pointless to be bothered by when I think of it like that, and – “

At that, Tifa is the one to cut Cloud off. “It matters. There’s nothing about addressing it when I was a kid I have ever regretted, if only for the fact that it means I was able to stand for what I wanted. We’re not all the same, Cloud. But if nothing else, I want you to accept that we will all have a future. Or at least enough time to allow for thought enough to the person you want to be. …I can’t convince you to survive. But while we’re still alive. Let yourself consider it. We’ve spent long enough picking up the pieces of our lives. Maybe we can use this as an excuse to move forward.

Cloud held her hand in his and promised.

He could not say it aloud. But the two of them had to have at least one promise he could keep.

That was enough.


End file.
